Bill Clinton drawn into Prince Andrew sex scandal

Washington: Former US president Bill Clinton has been drawn into the scandal surrounding Virginia Roberts' allegations she was instructed to have sex with Prince Andrew by American financier Jeffrey Epstein.

Court documents show Mr Clinton was one of many high-profile friends of Epstein to visit his private island and fly on his jet, and that Epstein's phone directory showed he had 21 phone numbers for Mr Clinton or his aides.

Former US president Bill Clinton and his wife Hillary Clinton in 2005.Credit:Getty

The documents suggest no wrong-doing on Mr Clinton's behalf, but they have set off speculation – particularly on the part of conservative online media – about the potential impact of the scandal on Hillary Clinton's presumed run for the White House.

Advertisement

"Bubba and the Palm Beach Pedophile" screams a headline on the Drudge Report, the conservative blog made famous by its Monica Lewinsky scandal revelations, in a headline today.

Virginia RobertsCredit:Facebook

"The [flight logs] clearly show that Clinton frequently flew with Epstein aboard his plane, then suddenly stopped – raising the suspicion that the friendship abruptly ended, perhaps because of events related to Epstein's sexual abuse of children," says a statement lodged by Ms Roberts' lawyer in a civil case.

"This information certainly leads one to believe that Clinton might well be a source of relevant information and efforts to obtain discovery from him were reasonably calculated to lead to admissible evidence," it went on.

In an interview with the Daily Mail in 2011, Ms Roberts, who was 17 when she met Epstein and claims she became his "sex slave", describes meeting Mr Clinton while with Epstein, but says she was never "lent out" to him, as she says she was to Prince Andrew.

The statement lodged last week by Ms Roberts' lawyers alleges that Epstein's goal in trafficking minors to rich and powerful people was to "ingratiate himself with them for business, personal, political, and financial gain, as well as to obtain potential blackmail information".

It is alleged Epstein has photographs of young women engaged in sex acts.

Other court documents – filed in 2011 as part of a related civil dispute – suggest Mr Clinton was one of several high-profile people to have become friends with Epstein.

Donald Trump, the Republican developer and TV personality who is considering his own run for the White House in 2016 features in these.

"The message pads confiscated from Epstein's home indicated that Trump called Epstein's West Palm Beach mansion on several occasions during the time period most relevant to my client's complaints," say the documents.

"Trump was quoted in a Vanity Fair article about Epstein as saying 'I've known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy. He's a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it – Jeffrey enjoys his social life.' "

The documents allege that Ghislaine Maxwell, the socialite daughter of the late press magnate Robert Maxwell, introduced the then 15-year-old Ms Roberts to Epstein, and forced her to have sex with them and other powerful associates. Ms Maxell denies the allegations.

The high-profile former Harvard law professor, defence attorney and political commentator Alan Dershowitz, on Monday furiously denied allegations in the new documents that he not only assaulted Ms Roberts, but that he witnessed assaults of her and other young women by Epstein and several co-conspirators.

"I don't even know who she is," he said. "I've never seen her, I've never met her. Her lawyers have to know this. Her lawyers … deliberately and wilfully filed this in a pleading, which they knew I had no opportunity to respond to in court, without any investigation.

"If they had simply investigated the manifest of the airplanes, if they had checked my travel records, if they had asked me, and I could have given them the names of the people who are witnesses, they would know the story is totally false."